It was one of those things for which they were
willing to fight; and their readiness to fight for the national idea was
the great salutary fact. Our country was thereby saved from the
consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy,
and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the
followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it, that the Union was
preserved.
Be it immediately remarked, however, that the pioneer Democrats were
obliged to fight for the Union, just because they were not interested in
its progressive consummation. They willed at one and the same time that
the Union _should_ be preserved, but that it _should not_ be increased
and strengthened. They were national in feeling, but local and
individualistic in their ideas; and these limited ideas were associated
with a false and inadequate conception of democracy. Jefferson had
taught them to believe that any increase of the national organization
was inimical to democracy. The limitations of their own economic and
social experience and of their practical needs confirmed them in this
belief.
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